Is there a reason to make discrete selections not cyclic
Im talking mostly about menus in games, when using a controller. But also stuff like different desktops on an android device. Mostly those are coupled with transition animations, lasting between 1/4 to 1/2 a second, forcing the user to give multiple inputs when going from one end to the other. I notice this is quite common, and I always wonder if the designer made a deliberate decision, or if he just didn't think about it.
Example 1 Think of an ingame menu, something like:
>Start
Settings
Help
Quit
If you want this to be controllable with an analog stick, you need a delay when selecting the option. The senseble thing to me would be making the selection cyclic. I.e. pressing "up" when "Start" is selected would select "Quit", and pressing "down" when "Quit" is selected would select "Start". However, I quite often experience that pressing "up" while start is selected does simply nothing
Example 2 Think of different screens on a smartphone or table, something like
___ ___ ___ ___
/ \/ \/ \/ \
| 1 || 2 || 3 || 4 |
\___/\___/\___/\___/
where you switch between screens by swiping left or right. The sensible thing to me, would be that swiping right on screen 4 would bring you to screen 1. However, there are devices where swiping right on screen 4 does nothing.
And there are probably more enviroments where stuff like that occurs, e.g. smart TVs or anything else that let's you go through discrete selections (where "discrete" here just means "no sliders" or stuff like that.